


Sister of Moses

by CrunchyWrites



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, I Can and Will write daemon!AU for anything, daemon!AU - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 14:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13766109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrunchyWrites/pseuds/CrunchyWrites
Summary: Miriam, name meaning: Rebellion, bitterness, sea of sorrow.





	Sister of Moses

**Author's Note:**

> I love daemon!AUs. I adore them. I'd only watched three episodes of The Exorcist with my friend before we both sat down and spent a good half an hour figuring out what Marcus and Tomas' daemons would be. We decided that Tomas' daemon would be a [klipspringer](https://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/4474684028_658w.jpg?w=488&h=326) and Miriam, Marcus' daemon, would be a [house finch](http://www.oiseaux-birds.com/passeriformes/fringillides/roselin%20familier/roselin-familier-femelle2.jpg). This is my first work for this fandom, and I hope you like it.

His Bible is open on his lap.

It has been for a while now, the vellum-thin pages soft and warm beneath his fingertips, but Marcus hasn’t read a single line from it in the last hour at least. He’s still… _settling_ , he would say. He’s still tamping down on his emotions – on the elation and the delight and the hot, savage _fury_ that follow so often in the wake of an exorcism. It was a success – of course it was, it always _is_ – but the fury is there all the same, directed at himself for letting the demon fester for so long and at the demon in general, at its smugness and the way it seemed so fucking _certain_ in itself, in its position, in how it had taken possession and tainted and corrupted as if it was its fucking _right_ , as if it was anything other than the god-damn _plague_ it was.

He doesn’t notice he’s beginning to crumple the page under his hand until Miriam presses a clawed foot to his neck in warning.

“Darling,” she says so very softly. “Marcus. Calm.”

“I am.”

“You are not.”

He is not. The page is still tight and twisted in his grasp, knuckles still edging towards white with the tension in his grip.

Miriam flitters on his shoulder, darts up into the air for half a breath before she settles again, hop-skipping across his shoulder to speak low and soft in his ear. “Marcus,” she murmurs, “Marcus…”

It’s a warning, in a way, and one that he knows well. _Restrain yourself_ , she means to say but never does, does not have to, _Calm yourself. Hold your anger for when you need it_.

“I’m cold,” he replies just as quietly. _Cold anger_. They’d read it in a book countless years ago, this concept of hot and cold anger, but Miriam had been the one to pick up on it. Miriam had been the one to flit from his shoulder and settle on the words, lean down to tap her beak against them with that strange, shushing sound of paper against bone, and say _This is what we need, Marcus. This is what we need to contain_.

It’s a common thought for the both of them these days. To run cold is to hold your anger back, hold it in, shape it and turn it to something you have control of, to something that no demon could ever turn against you because you have already turned it against itself. It is not Marcus’ natural inclination, and never has been – his anger runs hot like blood, heavy and twisted and bubbling at the surface of his skin, so close and so easy and so poisonously volatile. Demons _love_ it, he’s found, damn near fucking feast on it whenever he tries, against Miriam’s advice (against his _own_ damn advice) to turn it out and consume them with it.

Against his neck, Miriam’s beak runs in a small, soothing pattern. Marcus raises his hand, not looking up from the Bible open in his lap, and strokes her back with the knuckle of a single finger. The page flexes, freed from his grasp, and he watches it twist and find its settling-point amongst the new topography he has given it.

“Read to me,” Miriam says.

“You know the words better than I do, love.”

“Read to me all the same.”

Marcus smiles to himself. The words beneath his fingers are half-hidden by years worth of pen scrawlings and pencil drawings, but he doesn’t really need to see them to know them. Not anymore. “Revelations,” he reads, “ _Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne_ \- “

“ _-And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”_

“I thought I was the one reading to you.”

“You are. Continue.”

Marcus smiles, and clears his throat, and continues.

Inside his veins, hot anger turns to cold.


End file.
